2018 Winter Olympics: What is up with Australian snowboarder Scotty James' red gloves?

Paul Myerberg | USA TODAY Sports

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — The spectators wear gloves, unless they have a screw loose. The snowboarders wear gloves, or mittens, if we’re being precise.

But one pair of hand warmers are not quite like the others. Unlike fans in the stands or his fellow competitors, Scotty James’ mittens look suspiciously like boxing gloves — which is by design.

The Australian, who took bronze in Tuesday’s men’s halfpipe final, brought real, actual boxing gloves to the 2017 Winter X Games to remind himself that’s he in for a fight. Maybe the same message was sent to his competitors: James won the halfpipe at the event held in Aspen, Colo.

The gloves make the statement, “I’m Scotty James and I’m here to play,” he said.

But wearing real boxing gloves during competition is a non-starter even for James, who since finishing 21st in the halfpipe at the 2014 Sochi Games is now viewed as one of the leading snowboarders in the sport, trumped only by the USA’s Shaun White and Japan’s Ayumu Hirano.

It’s not allowed, for one. And it wouldn’t take a knowledgeable fan to grasp the negatives a pair of boxing gloves would bring to the table: no grip and heavy hands, for example, even if they’d deliver a knockout punch.

So the mittens he wore here at the Pyeongchang Games were instead boxing-gloves facsimiles, identical to the mittens worn by his competitors except for the overall design — bright red, secured on the back, with logos on the top and bottom of his wrist.

His bronze medal caps a fantastic three-year run for James, beginning with a first-place finish in the halfpipe at the 2015 World Championships. He repeated as world champion a year ago in Sierra Nevada, Spain, and has finished third, first and second, respectively, at the past three Winter X Games.

Maybe the gloves don’t play a huge role in James’ on-pipe performance — let’s give some credit to the board, not to mention the snowboarder himself. But save some recognition for the boxing-style mittens, which helped James embody the mindset behind his recent surge into the upper crust of snowboarders worldwide.